Re: verb agreement in one stage of English

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

> The universal's probably even weaker - in Hindi (and many other
> Indic languages), the verb of the past tense of a transitive verb
> agrees with the direct object. (Historically, these are passives,
> with the agent expressed in the instrumental, whence the 'split
> ergative' of Hindi.)

Going off on a tangent: It is a common mistake to trace the origin of
the MIA past to a ``passive''. The form ultimately comes from the -*to
adjective of PIE which, when applied to intransitives (not all
languages that have reflexes of the -to adjective apply them to
intransitives) seems to have referred to the `subject'. [So, in OE,
German etc, intransitives used forms of be as the auxilliary.]

Nath Rao